Claire McGrath with "Misfit," one of her cats: A friend says Claire witnessed history, and made history of her own. Ellen Blalock/The Post-Standard

Claire McGrath’s legs have been bothering her. In bed Thursday at her home on West LaFayette Avenue in Syracuse, with her cat Misfit curled at her side, Claire used her hands to create a map from the folds of a blanket:

The quonset huts where workers lived were here, and the military barracks were here, and the harbor was here.

Pearl Harbor.

Seventy-one years ago, Claire was a witness to the Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese attack.

“If you looked up at the planes,” said Claire, 87, “you could see the (emblem of the) rising sun.”

She was 16, a teenager from Brooklyn. As a child, she contracted osteomyelitis, a severe bone infection. When she graduated from middle school, she accepted her diploma in a hospital bed. Several New York City newspapers photographed the moment. They noted how Claire had received 23 transfusions.

Her life did not quiet down outside the hospital. Her parents had divorced. Americans sensed they’d soon be at war. To get ready, the government was doing a lot of building in Hawaii, and Claire’s stepfather knew he could find a job there in construction.

On Dec. 5, 1941 — after a cross-country train ride and a voyage by ship — Claire arrived at Pearl.

She was awakened by tumult on Dec. 7. A sailor who lived nearby was outside, playing with his little boy, when he heard the sound of incoming planes. At first, Claire said, everyone assumed it was an American training mission. Then the sailor began shouting:

“They aren’t ours!”

Bombs started falling. Claire’s stepfather and uncle hurried to the harbor to do what they could to help. Claire and her mother waited in their home. When they were finally allowed to go outside, they stood in line for seven hours to send a message to their family, saying they were all right.

More than 2,400 Americans died at Pearl.

Claire, a great-grandmother, was reminded the attack was more than 70 years ago.

“I believe it,” she said quietly. That part of life seems far away.

After the war, she married a Syracuse native named Edward McGrath. They moved here and raised two children, Denise and Russell. For a while, for a dollar an hour, Claire cleaned houses. She ended up working for the state Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. If she saw conditions that needed changing, she wasn't afraid to make some noise.

Pretty soon, she was president of her union.

“When I wrote her description for our ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’, I called her a force of nature,” said Phil Prehn, a community organizer with Syracuse United Neighbors. “She was frequently at our public meetings, and when someone would ask her if she wanted a microphone, she’d always say, ‘I don’t need a microphone.'"

Claire’s voice carried just fine, said Prehn, who made this point:

She saw history as a child, then made history as an activist in Syracuse.

In 1959, the McGraths moved to West LaFayette Avenue, a few houses away from South Salina Street. While Claire lost her husband 16 years ago, she stayed put, even as other homeowners left for the suburbs. Claire grew up in a Brooklyn streetscape of towering buildings. She likes the houses and yards of the South Side. The idea of taking off as the streets got edgier went against her nature.

“If more people believed in their neighbors, and participated and cared more about their neighborhoods, I think we’d get a lot of things cleaned up and a lot more done,” she said.

Thirty years ago, she joined SUN, an organization of city residents who advocate for change. Name a problem, and Claire has spoken out. She called for greater support for city schools. She made it known when she thought the city failed to plow South Side streets. She pushed relentlessly for foot patrols by neighborhood police.

Claire McGrath, at a public hearing in the 1990s: She never backs down.Suzanne Dunn/The Post-Standard

“I believe,” she said, “that if you show individuals you’re afraid of them, they’re going to aggravate you even more.”

Claire doesn’t seem afraid of anyone. She never forgets her time behind hospital walls as a child. The only way out was to decide she was getting out. She brings that tenacity to all obstacles.

As for Pearl Harbor, she knows there are few living Americans who saw the lines of enemy bombers in the morning sky, and she understands what time does to memory.

Even so, on Friday's anniversary, she hopes people stop and think.

“Just look and see what you have,” said Claire, who never forgets one childhood lesson from her illness, and the war: